Tuesday, 22 May 2012

O the mind, mind has mountains

Doesn't it just. Here are two poems which don't have much in common except that they offer the only reliable comfort in this lonely world: sleep and oblivion.

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.Comforter, where, where is your comforting?Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chiefWoe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing —Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief."'

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheapMay who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our smallDurance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: allLife death does end and each day dies with sleep.

This is Ian Bostridge singing Benjamin Britten's setting of Louis MacNeice's poem 'Cradle Song for Eleanor'.

Sleep, my darling, sleep;The pity of it allIs all we compass ifWe watch disaster fall.Put off your twenty-oddEncumbered years and creepInto the only heaven,The robbers’ cave of sleep.

The wild grass will whisper,Lights of passing carsWill streak across your dreamsAnd fumble at the stars;Life will tap the windowOnly too soon again,Life will have her answer –Do not ask her when.

When the winsome bubbleShivers, when the boughBreaks, will be the momentBut not here or now.Sleep and, asleep, forgetThe watchers on the wallAwake all night who knowThe pity of it all.